Biden Invokes Charlottesville In Blistering Remarks On Hate And The Israel-Hamas War
President Joe Biden invoked the White supremacist killing in Charlottesville — which he often cites as the reason he ran against then-President Donald Trump in 2020 — as he spoke about hate and the Israel-Hamas war.
On Saturday night, the president and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden gave remarks at the 2023 Human Rights Campaign National Dinner at the Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC.
The president was interrupted early on by a woman demanding a “ceasefire in Gaza.”
The president closed his remarks by discussing the situation in Israel and connecting it to the broader struggle against hate:
A week ago we saw hate manifested another way in the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. More than 1,300 innocent lives lost in Israel, including at least 27 Americans, children and grandparents alike kidnaped held hostage by Hamas.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Innocent Palestinian families, and a vast majority have nothing to do with Hamas. They’re being used as human shields. Yesterday, I spoke for over an hour, the family members of those Americans who are still unaccounted for. On a Zoom call.
They’ve endured the agony of not knowing what’s happened. Not the same thing, but I can tell you what it’s like. It’s one thing to lose someone you know you’re going to lose and be there with them and hold their hands like I was able to do with my son.
It’s a very other thing to get a phone call I got years ago saying there’s been an accident. Your wife and daughter are dead. I’m not sure your boys are going to make it. The uncertainty. Those two or three hours trying to get back to find out. It’s the worst feeling in the world. It’s gut-wrenching.
And it’s yet another reminder that hate never goes away. It only hides and hides under the rocks. I thought being so deeply involved in the civil rights movement when I was able to convince all people Strom Thurmond to vote for the Voting Rights Act in his last year changed his mind, I thought, Well, you can defeat hate.
But guess what happened? Hate just hides under the rocks until there’s a little oxygen blowing under like happened, what happened in Charlottesville. Just a little bit. And it comes roaring out again.
Folks, we have to reject hate in every form because history has taught us again and again anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia. They’re all connected. Hate toward one group left unanswered opens the door for more hate toward more groups more often readily! But here’s the way history shows The antidote to hate is love! The answer to twisted, dehumanizing ideology is solidarity and standing up for everyone in humanity!
Watch above via The White House.
